


Runs like clockwork, coolkid.

by orphan_account



Series: Post Sburb [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: #just play it cool and it will all blow over, Gen, it doesnt blow over tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-20
Updated: 2014-05-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 19:51:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1660460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Logically, he knows she wasn’t there at all. Doesn’t really want her there, actually. He’s got the feeling she’d be a little hard to talk to, and he’s not convinced she wouldn’t try to run out onto the street to convict a passing felon. As he stands, tugging on a shirt, he can almost see her in his room, all hard-cut lines and a wicked, excited energy in the way she throws her arms."</p><p>----------------------------------------------------------------------</p><p>It's hard to miss your friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Runs like clockwork, coolkid.

**Author's Note:**

> Let's play a game of "Does the author even know what symbolism is??????? Why do they have such a fucking obsession with it if they don't even know what they're doing??"
> 
> Let's play a game of "Why doesn't he just compile all these things into one big story with chapters instead of spreading
> 
> "Let's play checkers, let's play chess. Yeah yeah yeah yeah."
> 
> —REM

He wakes up to the high, pitchy cackle of the alien girl with jagged teeth and a sharper wit, but by the time (almost six seconds) he finally blinks the sludge out of his eyes, before he fumbles clumsily for his sunglasses, slipping them onto his face, she’s gone. 

Logically, he knows she wasn’t there at all. Doesn’t really want her there, actually. He’s got the feeling she’d be a little hard to talk to, and he’s not convinced she wouldn’t try to run out onto the street to convict a passing felon. As he stands, tugging on a shirt, he can almost see her in his room, all hard-cut lines and a wicked, excited energy in the way she throws her arms. She would be leaning out the window, shoulders forward, back arched like a cat, legs spread. Her horns might tap the edge of the window carelessly, a small, irregular tap, so far offbeat from his own unvarying tune. She’d suck in a dramatic gasp as she watched the people in the street.

Dave tugs his pants on, glancing at the window. “Coolkid,” she’d call loudly, in a sing-song sort of tone that wouldn’t suit her vocal cords. “Coolkid, a thief just stole an elderly human-lusus’s purse! Your world is absolutely wretched with crime, see? This is why _we_ have Legislacerators.” And then she’d probably try to go down there with her sword-cane and deal out some sick-nasty justice, and he’d probably get thrown into jail for keeping an alien in his house or something. Or maybe she wouldn’t, maybe trolls steal shit. He wasn’t listening all that hard when she told him about troll laws. He was a little more invested in the bizarrely, charmingly, musical lilt of her nail-on-chalkboard voice.

He hasn’t talked to her since the game ended, although Rose and John and even Jade have been trying to contact the other universe. He hasn’t. He kind of wants to leave it be.

“Ooh!” The phantom cackles as he steps into the main room, head buzzing. “Your house is like a big, fruity treasure trove!” He’d probably tell her to keep it down, because jesus, Bro’s probably trying to get some shuteye and there she is screaming about his fruity, felt ass monstrosities. There’s no noise from the couch, but Bro’s still there. Dave can tell because there’s a hand over the back of the futon, which he doesn’t even bother converting to a bed, just sleeps on it like a couch. He’s there though sleeping in like always. It’s a crime to wake up before eleven in the Strider residence.

“A crime?” The phantom in his mind demands grinning wildly. He bites his tongue, even though he didn’t say anything. _Yeah, it’s a crime and I’m the most hardened fucking criminal right now. All up and thieving some shuteye. Avoidance of the dream police._ He says, and the lines feel familiar and practiced, and he misses that. Just a little, the regularity that he employed, dealing with her erratic tendencies. How they always ended different, even against his uniform responses. The phantom laughs, and there’s a smuppet in her hand now. It’s bright red. She picks up  another one, a gross shade of yellow. “Let’s see what inspector Bananarump has to say about that!”  
He grinds his teeth down on his lip, and turns, shoulders rising despite himself. He walks into the kitchen, and opens the dishwasher, pulling out an apple juice from the top shelf. It gets caught in between the grate, and a bag of ice. He shakes it, and one of the wheels on the tray of the top shelf breaks free of the track. The corner of the dish-washer shelf falls forward, and before he reaches forward to catch it, it falls, an ice-bag breaks, and a couple bottles—various brands of his brother’s favorite drink, orange soda—fall onto the plastic tiling of the kitchen floor.  
“Th’fuck was that?” Bro asks in a muffled, barely awake voice. He pulls himself up by his errant arm. Dave shrugs, realizes his brother wouldn’t have noticed the gesture and breathes heavily out of his nose, dropping the applejuice onto the counter so heavily that it shakes the proboscis of the sink-dwelling smuppet.

“ _The corrupt judge: Pearbottom!”_ His projection of Terezi supplies, and Dave wrinkles his nose. She probably wouldn’t call it that. It’s not even pear green, it’s like. It’s fucking  watermelon green, slightly lighter mohawk and all. “The corrupt judge: Waterbottom?” She replies, cheekily, and obviously she corrected it, because he thought she would. It’s a shitty name, and he’s not even hallucinating, not even legitimately nuts, he’s just imagining her like a little kid who needs some kind of fake best friend ‘cause he can’t get any of his own from the playground.

“You always make the judges corrupt, man,” Dave mutters, leaning down to pick up the ice cubes.

“What was that?” Bro asks, stretching, and throwing a shirt on. Dave realizes he never actually answered his brother, and there’s a familiar, uncomfortable heat at the top of his ears.  
“I said I dropped the AJ, man.” Dave responds cooly, swallowing as he collects the already-melting ice from the ground, and feeling kind of stupid for even giving a shit about some ice on the ground. He’d probably feel a hell of a lot stupider if he left it there, let Bro walk into it.

 

He kind of wants to do that anyway, and doesn’t have a reason for it. 

 

“Alright,” Bro responds, finally setting his grey hat back on his head. He’s got tons of other colors, but only ever wears the grey one. As far as Dave can tell, there’s no reason for it. Maybe he likes grey, maybe he hates color. Maybe he likes the smell that comes with years of hair-gel pressed against hat fabric. 

There’s just no knowing with this guy. Dave throws the ice in the sink, (respectfully moving the corrupt— _the green smuppet—_ and letting it disapear into the drain on its own terms. He puts the orange juice back, nods at his brother, raises the bottle, and heads for his room.

“Not so fast, kid,” his brother cuts off, voice orotund. Dave reluctantly stops, turns, and raises his eyebrows. 

Jesus, he just wants to go back into his own personal man-cave. Why’s that gotta be such a federal crime—no, not crime, _issue._ Crime isn’t even an actual thing. Everybody on earth is fucking faultless and he can practically see her leaning against the counter, watching interestedly, sharp fingers curled under her chin, a playful, calculating grin on her face. “Sup,” he forces out eventually.

“What do you think about going out for dinner or something? Not anywhere nice, maybe Subway.” Bro offers, and there’s a little bit of the hesitance that he just _doesn’t_ want to see, something Bro’s been pulling out of his ass more and more, since that rooftop fuckup. He’s got no reason to be fucking hesitant. He’s Bro.  
“Nah, we don’t do that shit.” Dave responds easily, foot turning towards the door. He can’t leave yet, he knows. He can make it abundantly clear he _wants_ to leave, though. Bro rolls his eyes with his shoulders, a full body movement, ending with his wrists pushing slightly forward in his pockets.

“You’re not a piece of machinery, kid, it wouldn’t kill you to change your pace a little bit.” Is that irony. Is he being ironic, or does he genuinely not understand what he’s saying? Part of him hopes that Bro knows what he’s doing, (‘cause if he doesn’t, who does?) and the other part is narrowing his eyes, wondering what possessed him to be such a douchebag, and hoping that he’s just being stupidly concerned.

“No, no,” Dave responds, “you’re looking at a honest-to-god grandfather clock right here. See, I’ve got this pendelum thing that goes back and forth, and that’s what’s got me keeping my time, man. I need to go back to my private clockwork sanctum, and wind up, you feel me?” Dave asks, making a few lewd gestures with his fist and the apple juice bottle.  
Unsurprisingly, and probably due to his work in making puppets with noses that go up asses, Bro remains unfazed. A younger Dave would have commented that he’d just dropped the slyest fucking metaphor right there, and would have demanded a highfive, and probably would have gotten one, but the Dave standing there just gets a kind of deadpan, evaluating stare.

Because Dave’s pretty sure that Bro doesn’t trust him the exact same way as back then, because he doesn’t do what he would if he were the old version of himself. He’s different, and even he can tell.  
He raises his hand in a shitty, mock-salute, and Bro sighs, and wave’s his hand dismissively. “Fine, no subway. We’re gonna have another strife, though.” Bro says, and Dave nods with a shrug. He’s not gonna fight as hard this time, doesn’t want a repeat of that painfully awkward embrace between two people who _just aren’t made for hugging._  
  
Then he’s back in his room, he closes the door, and doesn’t dwell on the alien girl. He could contact her. He knows he can, he could talk to Rose and John and Jade, too, but there’s his alternate ectofathersonsiblingthing hanging out on there too, and he doesn’t feel right going on there, and ignoring him. So he sits down on his bed, leans his arms onto his elbows, and occasionally ducks his head, rubbing it with his palm where the sun hits it, as if trying to comb the light out of it with his fingers, but never actually moving away.  
The sounds of the city lazily drift in through the window, and he shuts his eyes, rubbing them under his sunglasses.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't actually ship Dave/Terezi, but I really like the characters. I don't actually ship anything, really.
> 
> I really like the part where Dave tries to fire sex jokes at Bro in an effort to disarm him and it just doesn't work. It's like he ain't even trying, man.
> 
> That's gotta be really intimidating, actually. There you are, masturbating an apple juice bottle, and the other guy doesn't even have the common decency to seem effected at all.


End file.
